WHAT IS IT? Exodus 16:2-15; John 6:24-35 A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church by Carter Lester on August 2, 2015

Perhaps you have heard about the young man who became a monk in a monastery in order that kept very strict rules about silence. The monks were to be silent at all times – except that every ten years each monk was given a chance to share two words with the abbot in charge of the monastery. At the end of his first ten years, the abbot indicated to the young monk that it was time to share his two words. “Bed hard!” the young monk said. After ten more years of silence, the now no-longer-so-young monk once again had an opportunity to share two words with the abbot. “Food bad!” he said. He then resumed his silent study and work. Finally ten years passed and the head monk again indicated that it was time for him to speak his two words. The now middle-aged monk said, “I quit!” The abbot shook his head and said, “I knew this was coming. You’ve done nothing but complain for the past 30 years!”

I don’t know about you, but one thing I hope no one has occasion to say about me is that I am a complainer. You know the type – always grumbling about one thing or another but never doing anything about it. Often cynical, rarely encouraging, generally sure that things were better some other time or place than they are here and now.

Instead, I hope I can be more like those whom I have admired through the years: slow to complain and quick to express gratitude, slow to criticize and quick to encourage others, slow to talk about how things were better in earlier times and in other places and quick to be open to new experiences and learning from younger generations.

But there is a difference in being a complainer and having a complaint.

Sometimes we do have reason to complain. Sometimes we are called to complain in the face of injustice. Sometimes we are called to speak up for other people, if not 2 ourselves, who are being mistreated. Sometimes we may even feel like we have reason to complain against God. If we do, we will not be the first to complain with God.

Complaints or laments appear prominently in the Psalms, in Job and many other places in the Bible.

Which brings us to Exodus 16. We may be tempted to treat the Israelites in the wilderness as nothing more than disgruntled complainers. I have heard sermons that called the Israelites, “ungrateful complainers,” and used them as examples of the kind of people we do not want to emulate. There is only one problem with understanding the passage as a critique of complainers: God does not criticize the Israelites for complaining. Instead, God seems to give them what they want – or at least what they need.

Let’s look again at Exodus 16. The fact is the people do have a complaint – and it is a very serious one. God has led them into a new place – and it is a hostile place.

They are hungry and unsure of where their next meal is coming from. The Israelites here are not complaining about the trivial – they are not grumbling about burnt toast or someone taking their parking spot. They are seriously concerned about having enough food to live on in this strange and hostile landscape. Their very survival appears to be at stake.

No wonder they are questioning God. In their desperation, they even look back at Egypt through rose-tinted glasses. Instead of remembering the oppression and suffering they experienced as slaves at the hands of the Egyptians, they can only remember the food that they had. Slavery in Egypt suddenly looks like a two-week vacation in a luxurious resort. 3

What about us? Can we see anything of us in these Israelites in the wilderness?

Thankfully few of us know the food insecurity the Israelites know here in Exodus

16. But most, if not all, of us know what it is like to find ourselves in a wilderness.

Perhaps we find ourselves in a wilderness because we have lost our way, and don’t know where to go next. Perhaps we feel like we are struggling to survive in the wilderness because of loss – the loss of a job, the loss of a loved one, the loss of the familiar. Perhaps we are in the wilderness because we are facing a problem for which we do not know the solution: we are traveling through the land of aging parents, or loved ones facing addiction, or deteriorating health. Or perhaps we are in the wilderness because Jesus has led us there. As Andrew Greeley once said, “If one wishes to eliminate uncertainty, tension, confusion and disorder from one’s life, there is no point in getting mixed up with…Jesus of Nazareth.”

How about you? Has there been a time when you felt like you had reason to make a complaint against God? Has there been a period in your life where you felt on your own and all alone? Has there been a time when it feels like God has led you into a strange and uncomfortable place? Is that time now?

Look then at how God responds to the complaint of the Israelites: God listens and God responds. Oh to be sure, I can imagine God thinking: “didn’t I part the Red

Sea for you? Didn’t I save you from the mighty Egyptians? Can’t you trust me now to provide what you need to lead you home?

But God does not any of those things – or criticize or bash the Israelites in any way. Instead God gives them what they need. “The Lord spoke to Moses and said, ‘I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, 4 and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the

Lord your God.’” (16:11-12).

God does not give the Israelites what they ask for: they asked, after all, to return to slavery in Egypt. But God gives them what they need. Quails appear, at least for one night, and so the people have meat to eat. But then then another mysterious substance appears. This will be a staple of their diet as they travel through the wilderness. It is a fine, flaky, white food that they would find on the ground mixing with the cool morning dew. Scientists have theorized that the substance came from plant lice attacking the fruit of tamarisk trees. Sounds delicious doesn’t it?

The Israelites have never seen this white substance before. Indeed, the very name the Israelites give to this miracle food speaks to how it is unlike anything they have seen before. They call if “manna,” which in Hebrew is simply the question, “What is it? Perhaps it was there all along, but only after God spoke through Moses did they realize that it was edible or could keep them alive. This is what is important a

The manna is plentiful here in Exodus 16. But it cannot be saved or hoarded.

Instead, it rots within a day or two under the Middle East sun. Thankfully it an be found and gathered each morning. The manna will be the Israelites’ daily food, their daily bread.

Exodus 16 is not just a story about what happened to God’s people “back then.”

It describes what happens right now. God is still listening to God’s people with God’s

“large and patient ears.” (Peter Marty) God is still providing what we need. And God is still providing manna to God’s people traveling through the wilderness. God is still providing what we need. 5

Now God may not deliver our manna according to the schedule we set. God’s provision may take awhile to arrive. Patience, trust, and a long memory of all that God has already done are therefore important qualities to have when you find yourselves in a wilderness. So is being open to the unexpected and paying attention to that which we may have previously been overlooking. Our help may arrive in such a strange and unexpected form that we too ask, “What is it?”

But we can trust in this: God provides, in every place and in every time. We may want a detailed map but God is more likely to show us the next few steps. We may well want Go to bring home everything on our shopping list. Instead, God gives us what is on God’s giving list. We may well want to be able to stockpile a warehouse of resources so that we can be confident that we have enough. What God gives us instead is our manna that cannot be stored up or hoarded but which will be enough to feed us for a day. This is what we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer – our daily bread, not a yearly supply of all our groceries. And this is what God gives us.

For the Israelites in Exodus 16, that daily bread is the manna they can collect each morning. But our loving and generous God does not end with manna. Later there will come a time when God sends his only Son to be the bread of life for God’s people.

Jesus is God’s ultimate gift and provision for our lives, giving us what we need, whether we are in the wilderness or on a mountaintop or in the valley of the shadow of death.

And Jesus is. the ultimate provision of life beyond death. He is the bread of life.

Anyone who trusts in him will not go hungry. Anyone who turns to Him will not grow thirsty. In Him, we will always find what we need.

Thanks be to God!